


sometimes it's painful, sometimes it's sad

by pinkbelle



Series: to be where you are [6]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Domestic Avengers, Gen, Peter Parker is Pepper Potts's Biological Child, Peter Parker is Tony Stark's Biological Child, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Spider Bite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2020-06-27 03:01:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19781884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkbelle/pseuds/pinkbelle
Summary: “Absolutely not.”“Tony you’re being unreasonable, as usual.”Peter’s head hit the heavy wood of the dining table with a low thunk and he groaned. The argument his parents were having about the upcoming Oscorp field trip had been going on for almost the entire two weeks since the fourteen-year old had first mentioned it.Part of 'to be where you are', an AU series in which Peter is Tony and Pepper's son.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Look at me, back on my bullshit. This is entirely down to hispeculiartreasure on tumblr, so if you've been waiting for an update on this series you have her to thank because she is a one-woman motivation machine. This takes place in a post-Ultron, pre-Civil War world where everyone is happy and Nothing Bad Happens Ever. 
> 
> Title comes from Hopper's speech in ST3 which I finished this morning and still haven't emotionally moved past soooo there you go.

“Absolutely not.”

“Tony you’re being unreasonable, _as usual_.”

Peter’s head hit the heavy wood of the dining table with a low _thunk_ and he groaned. The argument his parents were having about the upcoming Oscorp field trip had been going on for almost the entire two weeks since Peter had first mentioned it – his mom wanted him to go for the experience with his friends, while his dad had adopted an ‘over my dead body’ position on the matter. Pepper and Peter had repeatedly argued that he would be careful - he knew there was a reason his father hated Oscorp as they were shady in ways that his dad would never allow Stark Industries to be - but at the end of the day the field trip was for a lecture on genetic biology and would take at most three hours.

Tony ignored his son’s display of protest at the ongoing discussion. “Norman Osborne can’t be trusted with the safety of his own employees, you think I’m going to let our kid walk in there?” Gesticulating with his fork he pointed it at Pepper and waved it for embellishment as he punctuated his words. “Not. Happening.” 

Pepper rolled her eyes, pulling the fork out of Tony’s hand from across the table. He gave an indignant yelp as she placed it down on the surface of the table. Glancing at their teenager, she shook her head fondly before placing a hand on top of his messy dark hair and gently scratching his scalp.

“What do you want, baby?” she asked softly, lifting her hand as he raised his head to sit up. “Do you want to go? I know Ned is going, and if you want to go,” she shot a glare at Tony, “we don’t want you to miss out.”

Peter’s eyebrows knitted together in concentration and Pepper smiled at the expression, one of the many that Peter had that really showed how similar he was to his father. She and Tony sat waiting for the boy to speak, with Pepper giving Tony a subtle kick under the table when it looked like he was going to open his mouth (although Tony himself would make it known that there was never anything ‘subtle’ about her kicking him in five-inch stiletto heels). 

“I think,” Peter began cautiously, looking at Tony apprehensively, “I think I’d like to go.”

“That’s absolutely fine, I’ll sign your permission slip after dinner.” Pepper brought an end to any further debate with an immediate clearing of the table, ignoring the sigh that came from her husband. Peter rose to his feet to help his mom clear the table while his dad went to go and check on Morgan, the seven-year old having been put to bed just before dinner. The two walked through to the kitchen, and Pepper stacked the dishes into a pile beside the sink before leaning against the counter as she waited for Peter to deposit the glasses in the sink. When his hands were free she took one of his into her own, leading him back past the dining table to the open living room to sit on the large L-shaped sofa. The clattering coming from the kitchen signalled that Tony had seen to it that Morgan was still asleep; the slightly raised volume of the cleaning process gave Pepper the confirmation that the Oscorp discussion was far from over and his sulking would no doubt be her problem to deal with later. For now she knew he wouldn’t say anything else on the matter after the look of hopefulness Peter had given him when he said he wanted to go. 

The time after dinner and before Peter went to bed was some of Pepper’s most valued time in the day. After school and before dinner Peter always spent time with Tony in his lab, either doing his homework or – if he didn’t have any – helping Tony with whatever project he was able. Sometimes Morgan would ‘assist’ the two of them (usually meaning she sat on the couch Tony had put in just before Peter was born and color with Dum-E), but it was all but officially Peter’s time with Tony. However, after dinner was the time when Pepper would sit with her son in the living room. Sometimes they would sit quietly, each with their own book, sometimes they watched a movie, and sometimes they would just sit and talk. Pepper knew that her days of Peter voluntarily hanging out with his parents were numbered, he would be fifteen in a matter of months, and so she was making the most of it while she could. 

“Want to finish _Chef’s Table_?” Peter asked, reaching forward to pick up the remote from the coffee table. He’d assumed his usual sprawling position across the charcoal fabric of the sofa with his legs spread out over his mom’s after she’d toed her shoes off and buried her feet in the fluffy carpet beneath the coffee table.

“Sure.” Pepper placed a gentle hand on her son’s calf, cocking her head back towards the kitchen to call out to her husband. “Honey, could you please boil the kettle?”

A half-hearted grumble came in response but the tell-tale clinks of mugs being brought out of the cabinet confirmed that he’d registered the request. Tony came in a few minutes later with two mugs of herbal tea, depositing one on each of the end tables bookmarking the sofa before dropping a kiss on Pepper’s head and ghosting a hand over Peter’s messy hair. He retreated to the garage, as was his habit after dinner, and Pepper and Peter sat in comfortable silence with the show playing quietly in the background. Pepper reached out for the discarding chemistry text book on the coffee table, extracting the crumpled permission slip and filling it in. Once she had she slipped it back inside, ensuring the top of it was poking out from between the pages so that Peter wouldn’t forget to hand it in. Leaning back and picking up her mug, her focus returned to the show and the companionable silence continued. 

“Is he mad that I want to go?”

The unforeseen interruption from her son had Pepper looking away from the TV to face the teenager who was studiously staring at the mug of tea in his hands rather than meeting her gaze. Pepper placed her mug on the floor beside her feet and shifted Peter’s legs off of her, repositioning to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with him. 

“Baby,” she murmured, running a hand softly through his hair that was beginning to get long enough to fall into his eyes, “your dad is stubborn and can be ignorant about a lot of things...other people’s feelings included.” The last comment elicited the soft chuckle she’d hoped to get from her kid and she dropped her hand to his shoulder. “He’s not mad at you, but you know what he’s like and how overprotective he can be.”

“That’s an understatement,” Peter muttered, putting his mug back on the table. 

“Is it without reason?”

A sigh. “I guess not.” Peter lifted his head, gaze casting briefly to the tv before turning to his mother as his expression brightened. “Is Cooper still coming that weekend, after the field trip?”

“Yes, he is,” Pepper confirmed with a smile, “have you thought about what you guys want to do?”

“There’s a new exhibition at the Natural History Museum, it looks so cool!” With that the subject was changed, Peter excitedly reciting the description of the exhibition he planned on going to with Clint’s son as Pepper gave him her full attention. As she watched him try to muffle his third yawn she proclaimed it was time for him to go to bed, and he pressed a kiss to her cheek before he sleepily wandered to his room. 

“Turn the TV off please, Jarvis,” Pepper requested quietly as she stood up and straightened out the pillows on the couch before collecting the two tea mugs and padding down the hall in her socks to the kitchen. She placed them in the dishwasher and retrieved a glass, filling it with water. Making her way through the kitchen she climbed the stairs and walked to Morgan’s room. Easing the door open, with the warm glow of the little girl’s night light casting a shadow over the sleeping girl, Pepper tread lightly to kneel beside the bed, ghosting her lips over Morgan’s red hair. She readjusted the purple comforter to cover her daughter fully before she retreated to the master bedroom to get ready for bed.

Pepper had just fallen asleep when she felt Tony climb into bed beside her, feeling his lips against her shoulder. 

“I put Pete’s chemistry book in his backpack,” he murmured softly, “along with the permission slip.”

“He’s going,” she muttered, still half-asleep with her eyes closed.

“Yeah, I know. Doesn’t mean I can’t worry about it for the next week until it’s come and gone.”

“Just try to be less vocal with your worrying, please?”

“I make no promises.”

Pepper scoffed tiredly, reaching out clumsily to turn off the light on her nightstand. She felt the strong arm of her husband reach across her to do it, gently kissing her cheek as he leant back onto his own pillow and said goodnight. Feeling herself falling back to sleep Pepper reflected on how lucky she was to have found a man so invested in the happiness and well being of his children, even if he was a little reckless with his own. 

**-x-**

The alarm sounding the following morning came, as always, too early for Pepper’s liking. Tony groaned in protest, dragging the heavy comforter over his head. Pepper responded in kind by yanking it off of him, gently nudging his shin with her foot. 

“You want the teenager or the second grader?” she asked with a yawn, stretching her arms up in front of her and arching her back.

Tony reluctantly rolled to face her, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “I’ll take the teenager this morning, you get Little Miss Sunshine.”

The two got up and dressed before heading off to their respective destinations - as Pepper knocked gently on Morgan’s door to wake their daughter up she could hear Tony banging around in Peter’s room to make as much noise as possible while Peter yelled at him and threatened to call child services. She rolled her eyes as she helped Morgan stumble out of bed and pick out an outfit, only leaving the room when she was satisfied that the girl was actually getting dressed rather than falling back into bed. 

Pepper made her way downstairs while finger-combing her hair into a low ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her presence triggered the motion-sensor lighting that illuminated the kitchen in a warm white light, and the timer on the coffee maker had meant she was greeted as always with a pot of freshly-brewed coffee. Stretching up on her toes to reach the mugs in the cabinet she pulled down three of the normal ones as well as one of the travel mugs and then moved over to the next cabinet to get some cereal bowls and distribute them on the breakfast bar. While she was retrieving the milk from the fridge Tony and Morgan arrived into the kitchen, Tony heading immediately for the coffee pot while Morgan went to the pantry and got out her cereal which she then took to the counter. Watching as Tony downed one cup of coffee, pouring himself another the moment he was done, and Morgan ate breakfast Pepper leaned back against the kitchen island. 

“Morgan, remember that Auntie Nat is picking you up from school today for ballet,” she reminded as she caught sight of the pink gym bag beside Morgan’s backpack. 

“I know, mommy,” Morgan replied matter-of-factly, and Pepper rolled her eyes while Tony smirked into his mug. She cast a quick glance over towards the direction of the stares before looking at her husband with a quirked brow.

“Chance of an appearance before James gets here?”

“Absolutely none, I’m pretty sure he’s still asleep.”

“Tony!”

Tony threw his hands up in submission. “Alright, alright! J, tell Peter if he isn’t down here in five minutes I’m activating the sprinklers.”

There was a pause while the message was relayed before Jarvis responded. “Master Peter acknowledges this and replied using words that have been deemed inappropriate to use in the presence of his sister.”

Tony snorted as he heard Morgan questioning “what words, mommy?”, but thankfully Pepper was spared having to think on her feet that early in the morning by the arrival of Peter’s ride to school. 

“Uncle Rhodey!” Morgan’s announcement of their visitor was a squeal of excitement and she threw herself down off of the barstool she was sat on to launch herself into her uncle’s arms. He caught her with a grunt, leaning down to set her back on the ground.

“How’s my favorite niece?” he asked, kneeling down to be at her eye level.

Pepper saw Morgan’s brow crinkle at that as she thought his statement through. 

“Uncle Rhodey,” she replied critically, “I’m your _only_ niece. That doesn’t mean anything!”

Rhodey stood up and shook his head. “She’s definitely yours, alright.”

“The thirty seven hours in labor didn’t prove that?”

Rhodey laughed, bringing Pepper in for a quick hug. He raised a hand in greeting to Tony before looking around the room and noticing an absence.

“If you tell me the kid’s still asleep he’s finding his own ride to school.”

A grumpy voice from the hallway cut into the conversation. “The kid is here and awake because _someone_ scared him into early heart failure this morning.”

Tony pointed at him in disbelief. “But it worked, didn’t it? Here you are, up and dressed and not destined to be the proud owner of another tardy slip!”

“Whatever,” Peter muttered, grabbing his backpack from the floor by the fridge.

Tony frowned. “Hey,” he called out, stopping the teenager in his tracks. Peter turned with reluctance as Tony looked at him expectantly.

“Sorry,” he sighed. 

Tony nodded. “Better,” he accepted, before tossing a granola bar to him. 

“Here, sweetie,” Pepper brought over the travel mug of coffee she’d prepared. Whether or not Peter had been allowed to have coffee had served as one of the few seriously argumentative parenting moments Pepper and Tony had experienced but it was one that had ultimately been decided by his school having an open (and free) coffee bar in the quad.

Offering his mom a smile in gratitude he took the mug, pocketing the breakfast bar from his dad, and he headed towards the elevator with his uncle in tow. 

Tony exhaled. “One down, one to go.” He said that every single morning they were successfully able to get one kid out of the door before the other, as opposed to having to deal with two at once in a scenario that always resulted in everyone being late. He turned to face Morgan who had taken her bowl over to the sink and was finished her glass of water. “You ready, princess?”

“Yeah!” 

Tony picked up the other backpack that had been discarded by the fridge the previous day and shouldered it, guiding Morgan out in the same direction Rhodey and Peter had left in.

“Bye mom,” he called over his shoulder, a sentiment Morgan immediately echoed at twice the volume. Pepper laughed and waved at the pair.

With the penthouse to herself she took a moment to breathe and examined the state of the kitchen post-breakfast before deciding that it wasn’t too much for Tony to handle when he got back. She slipped on the shoes she’d chosen for the day, picked up her bag and headed out the door herself. Once she was in the car with Happy she sent a quick text to Peter as a thought popped into her mind.

[Mom ♥️ 07:34]

Don’t forget to hand in your permission slip! x

[Peter 🎧 07:35]

afhsdjkhfs i would’ve forgotten 100% thanks mom


	2. Chapter Two

By the time the Midtown field trip rolled around Peter had long-since handed in the necessary permission slip signed by his mother. The morning of the trip itself he had been excited and enthusiastic enough that Tony hadn’t been able to bring himself to continue his tirade against Oscorp, which he had done every other morning for the past week. The teenager had - for once - actually gotten up when his alarm went off and Pepper and Tony had almost gone into shock when the notoriously late sleeper appeared for breakfast with Morgan. By the time he left for school he’d accomplished more of what should be his normal routine than his parents could dream of and they were left slightly agog. 

“I knew he was excited but I didn’t realise he was _that_ excited,” Tony remarked as he sat with one of his legs underneath him on the edge of their bed. He flicked idly through the images on the screen of his tablet, quirking an eyebrow at one every now and then and swiping it in the opposite direction to the others. Pepper hummed her agreement as she placed the last shirt in her small suitcase. Tony looked up at her as she was tucking a long strand of strawberry blond hair behind her ear before she zipped her suitcase closed. Feeling his gaze on her she raised her eyes to meet his and he stuck his lower lip out in a pout. The expression looked so much like the face their seven-year old pulled when she didn’t get her way that Pepper couldn’t stop herself from laughing. Tony’s expression fell flat and he rolled his eyes good-naturedly. 

“Good to see you’re going to miss your darling husband while you take a jaunt over to the West Coast, leaving me to fend for myself and our two offspring,” he drawled as he fell back dramatically against the pillows, tossing his tablet onto the bedcover and crossing his arms. 

His wife shook her head in exasperation, lifting herself up on to the mattress and laying down with her head on Tony’s legs. 

“If you’d like to go and deal with the California board and shareholders you are more than welcome to, Tony.”

“On second thought, I’ll stick with the anklebiters.”

Pepper breathed out a laugh. “Peter’s nearly fifteen honey, and he’s almost -”

“DON’T SAY IT.”

“- at the same vertical position as you,” Pepper finished. Tony scoffed in disgust and pulled his legs out from under her head, and Pepper continued to laugh. 

There was a chime from the phone Pepper had set on top of her suitcase and Tony watched as she lifted herself into an upright position to take hold of it. 

“That’s my car,” she sighed, turning her head to look at him. All the joking aside Tony never enjoyed the time Pepper spent away, whether it was for a day or a week. As soon as Peter had become a thought in their minds a firm promise had been made that they would never go on trips at the same time, one of them would always be home, and they tried to set a limit on how many nights were spent away from home. With Pepper as CEO it was harder with her schedule, but they’d made it work and her trips were fewer and further between.

Tony pushed himself forward on to his knees and gently took Pepper’s face into his hands. He pressed his lips to hers softly, tilting his forehead to meet hers when they pulled apart. 

“Safe travels Miss Potts,” he murmured, gently stroking her cheek with his thumb.

“Thank you, Mr Stark.” She kissed him once more before she leaned back and reluctantly got off of the bed. Tony stood up as she pulled on a pair of red sling-backs to go with her dark jeans and took a hold of her case. He walked her out to the lobby where Happy was waiting, handing the bag over to the other man before kissing his wife one last time as she headed out to the car. Casting a glance at his watch he saw that he had a couple of hours to kill before he needed to go and get Morgan from school.

“What’s on the docket, Jarvis?” he questioned as he stepped back into the elevator. 

“Mr Wilson has requested that you re-examine the GPS system in his gear as he finds it to be inaccurate, and the latest upgrade to the software beta test for the global communication network is due.”

“So it’s the perfect time to work on the lightsabers Pete wanted to build for when Barton’s kid is here? Great!” Tony could’ve sworn he heard the AI sigh, but by the end of the allotted time period he had a couple of functioning props his kid would love. 

“Sweet,” he remarked to himself as he placed the metal handle down onto his work bench, dusting his hands off on his jeans. Snatching up the keys to the Audi that had been delivered a couple of days earlier and he hadn’t had the chance to test out Tony made his way to the garage, grabbing one of the booster seats for his daughter who was still just below the height requirement to sit without one. Depositing it in the backseat he started the car and pulled out of the garage on to Park Avenue. He was halfway to Morgan’s school when his phone rang.

Frowning at the Midtown Tech number that came up on the caller ID on the media player Tony hit the button to pick up the call. 

“Stark,” he greeted, flicking his indicator to move lanes.

“Mr Stark, I’m calling from the nurses’ office in regards to your son Peter? He hasn’t been feeling well for the last few hours and he’s currently sitting with us for his last period - we have it on our records that he usually makes his own way home, but could you please come and collect him instead today?”

“What’s wrong with him?” Tony asked, concerned.

The nurse sighed on the other end of the phone. “The poor boy seems to have a fairly intense migraine, but we don’t seem to have him suffering from migraines in his medical file.”

The statement had Tony’s heart sinking. “He’s never had them before but I got them pretty frequently as a kid, and it is hereditary.” Coming up on Morgan’s school he pulled into the pick-up lane behind the line of other cars. “I guess I was just hoping because he’d made it this far without one he wasn’t going to have to deal with it.” In the periphery of his vision Tony saw his youngest half-skipping, half-running towards his car, her unruly hair having fallen loose from the tidy ponytail it had been put in when she left that morning. Tony placed a finger to his lips as a warning when she opened the back door and climbed in before kissing it and touching it to her forehead. Morgan giggled at the action while she buckled her seatbelt.

“I’m just picking my daughter up from school, I can be there in ten minutes,” Tony confirmed as he ended the call and began to merge back into the flow of traffic. His attention turned to the child in the back of the car. “How was school, pumpkin?”

“So much fun!” Morgan exclaimed, pulling a book from her backpack. “We had to write a story about our family and I wrote about that time you got our house blown up!” Tony sputtered at the accusation but the girl continued unperturbed. “Jeremiah tried to tattle on me to our teacher for telling lies but then she said that she _remembered_ it happening, and he got in trouble for being an idiot.”

“I don’t think she called him an idiot, Morg.”

Morgan huffed. “No, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t one.”

“I’m sure he is, just don’t let mom hear you talking about someone like that.” Tony lifted his eyes to the rearview mirror to see Morgan watching the sights of Murray Hill disappear behind them as they crossed the Queensboro Bridge to Astoria and Peter’s school.

“Why are we going to get Petey?” Morgan enquired curiously.

“Apparently Peter isn’t feeling well after his field trip, so it’s better for us to go get him so he doesn’t have to go home by himself.” 

“Okay.” The answer was taken for face-value and soon enough Tony heard the tell-tale ruffle of paper that signified Morgan was done with his company and conversation and had turned to her book of the week. _Like mother like daughter_ , Tony thought to himself as he shook his head fondly and switched the radio on to a low volume. Not too much after that they were pulling up outside of the main gate to Midtown Science and Technology with only a couple of other cars in sight as the school had another hour to go before the final bell. Tony opened his door and stepped out of the coupe and helped Morgan down. Taking her little hand they walked through the gate and up the stairs to the main door. Following the clearly marked signs to the correct room Tony pushed open the door marked ‘Nurse’, letting go of Morgan’s hand and signalling for her to wait outside. 

Inside the room filled with glass-fronted cabinets holding the usual school nurse paraphernalia Tony’s eyes sought out his son. In the far corner of the room, where Tony could see that the ceiling lights had been dimmed, there was a figure curled in on themselves on a cot with their hands clamped over their eyes and an achingly familiar mop of hair. Tony walked forward as quietly as he could manage before dropping to his knees beside the bed.

“Peter?” he whispered, cautiously placing a hand on his son’s back so that he could withdraw it quickly if he needed to.

The fingers covering one of Peter’s eyes splayed open slightly, revealing a squinting red-rimmed brown eye. “Dad?” Peter croaked.

“Right here bud,” he assured, turning his head to look for the nurse. She appeared beside him almost as though he’d summoned her. 

“He should be fine in the morning, but you should take him to see his pediatrician to see if it’ll be a recurrence,” she instructed before turning to Peter with a warm smile. “I hope you feel better, Peter.”

“Thanks.” The word was whispered through gritted teeth.

Tony helped Peter sit up and keep his balance, feeling the majority of his son’s weight leaning into his side once Peter was on his feet. He wrapped an arm securely around his shoulders and tugged him closer in to his hold, bidding the nurse goodbye as he opened the door. Morgan was waiting as instructed but her eyes widened upon seeing her brother.

“Peter?” she cried out. The flinch the boy gave at the volume she’d used had Tony himself recoiling. 

“Morgan, quiet,” he instructed, nodding towards the direction of the car. “Go get in the car.”

The girl pouted at the reprimand but began making her way towards the car as ordered. Once they were out of the main school doors Tony fumbled in his pocket for the keys and hit the button to unlock it as Morgan was already impatiently tugging on the handle. Taking the stairs slowly, one at a time, he and Peter eventually reached the passenger door of the Audi. While Peter got himself settled in the seat Tony moved around to the trunk to see if Bruce had tossed in any of his headphones when he’d driven it down from the compound. With luck on his side he spotted the thick black band of the noise-cancelling headphones and pulled them out of the side pocket they’d fallen in to. He closed the trunk as gently as he could and walked around to the driver’s side, handing Peter the headphones once he was in the car. Peter didn’t say a word as he accepted them, just pulling them on and closing his eyes. 

“Daddy?” His name was spoken in an apprehensive voice, and when Tony turned back to look at Morgan he could see that she was scared.

“Is Peter okay?” she whispered, fingers clutched tightly together. 

Tony reached out and placed a hand over her knee. “He will be sweetie, he just has a really bad headache so we have to be quiet, okay? That includes when we get home.”

“Okay,” she replied in a small voice, wide brown eyes fixed on her brother curled in on himself in the front seat. 

The rest of the journey home passed in silence and without issue, and Tony could see the tension easing from Peter’s shoulders as they got closer to home. By the time they were pulling into the garage he’d removed the headphones from over his ears and was just sitting back with his eyes shielded behind a pair of sunglasses but no longer in the same amount of pain. Tony pulled into the car’s space and shut the engine off. He gazed into the rearview mirror to meet his daughter’s eyes. “Morgan, go ahead upstairs sweetheart, I think Uncle Rhodey was dropping off some of Nana Rhodes’ brownies on his way out to the compound.”

Morgan opened her mouth as though to let out a cheer but she caught herself just in time, instead nodding and giving her dad a thumbs up. Once she was out of the car Tony watched her as she made her way to the elevator, giving a quiet instruction for Jarvis to take her upstairs in case the girl had other sneaky ideas about going to the workshop.

“How’re you doing, bud?” Tony murmured, looking at his son and pushing some of the curls stiff with dried sweat off of his forehead. 

Peter shrugged minutely and pulled the sunglasses off to meet his dad’s eyes. “Better, I guess. It came out of nowhere, I don’t know what happened.”

“Did it start on the field trip or after you got back to school?”

“Kind of on the bus on the way back? I don’t know. Maybe it was all of the lab lighting, I’m pretty sure they use xenon bulbs in their overheads which is crazy, I guess they gave me a headache.”

Tony hummed, moving his hand to press the back of it against Peter’s forehead. “You’re a little warm, but I guess that might just be residual...maybe you should go to bed, go and try to get some rest and see if you feel better by dinner.”

Peter nodded, turning to open the door of the car. The two made their way up to the penthouse together and Tony pulled a water bottle from the fridge as they passed through the kitchen. He handed it to Peter before heading up the stairs with the boy following behind. He stopped in the bathroom and rooted out a box of aspirin, popping out a single dosage which he deposited into Peter’s palm when he got to his room. Peter took the medication and chased it with a swig of water from the bottle. He recapped the bottle and set it down on his nightstand before collapsing down on his bed with a groan. Tony raised an eyebrow in concern but the teenager shook his head.

“I’ve been wanting to do this since I started to feel crappy,” he replied in a voice muffled by his pillow, “it just feels really good.”

“Alright kiddo, rest up,” Tony instructed, leaning down to press a kiss to his hair, “I’ll come see how you’re doing just before dinner.” Turning to leave Peter’s bedroom he closed the door behind him and walked to Morgan’s room. As he’d expected the girl was sitting on her floor with a book open in front of her and one of the famous brownies in hand. 

“C’mon Morguna, let’s take this party downstairs.” Morgan looked up at her dad’s voice and smiled widely, gathering her book up in her arms and skipping out in front of him to go downstairs. Tony led her to the kitchen and patted one of the bar stools that she then jumped up on to, glaring as the sleeve of Tony’s sweater was passed over her mouth to get rid of the crumbs from her snack. Poking her tongue out she accepted the cup of juice he held out to her before he took a seat beside her at the breakfast bar. 

**-x-**

The next few hours were spent with Morgan working on the homework she had been given with Tony’s help, although she did consult Jarvis every so often as though to double-check her father’s answers which Tony found less than hilarious. A picture was taken of Morgan with the plate of brownies and was sent to Rhodey and his mother, and Tony decided to send it to Pepper as well. Pepper sent back a single unimpressed-looking emoji in response but he wasn’t sure if it was because of the dessert before dinner or the fact that he’d captioned the message “ _proof of life_ ”. When it eventually got to six he made the executive decision that they were going to order in for dinner and went up to Peter’s room before he placed the order. He knocked softly on the door, easing the handle down slowly and pushing it open. When he was met with a pair of open brown eyes turning to look at him he forwent his tentative entry and stepped into the room fully.

“How’re we doing kiddo?” he asked softly, crossing his arms and leaning against the dresser beside the door.

“A lot better.”

Tony could see that this was the truth - the color had returned to Peter’s face, and he was holding his phone loosely in one hand so clearly his headache had dissipated if he’d been looking at the small screen. 

“You up for some dinner? Morg is insisting on Italian, but if you’re feeling something else we can order from another place.”

Peter pushed the covers back and swung his legs out of bed. “No, Italian is fine - can we get it from that place on 8th?”

Tony smiled fondly and nodded. “Sure thing. Let’s order, and then we can call mom to check in.” He walked to the door and headed for the stairs with his son padding along the hardwood floor behind him. Tony found himself making his way down the stairs slowly, half-turned and looking behind him so that if Peter stumbled he’d be able to catch him. They got to the bottom without incident and when they entered the kitchen Morgan was waiting at the counter with Natasha. At the sight of her father the girl was bouncing on the balls of her feet, one hand clutching her aunt’s.

“Girl time!” The exclamation was made at a lower decibel than Morgan’s usual excited tone which Tony was grateful for. He quirked an eyebrow at Natasha who was shaking her head fondly.

“I thought, since Pepper isn’t here, Morgan could get some girl time with me and spend the night,” she explained. One of Morgan’s favorite things to do was to have a sleepover with Auntie Nat, and as Tony thought about it he realised it had been a while since the last one.

Smirking at his friend he shrugged and wrapped a loose arm around Peter’s shoulder. “Take her to school tomorrow and you’ve got yourself a deal. Y’know what, throw in one of those casserole things you make and you can keep her, we’ve got another.”

“ _Daaaaaaddy_ ,” Morgan whined. Tony couldn't help but laugh at how much the frown on her face looked like the same unimpressed expression Pepper had that he was often on the receiving end of. He reached out a hand to cup the back of her head, leaning down to press a kiss to her hair. 

“Have fun, don’t forget your toothbrush.”

Morgan let out a little squeal of delight and raced off towards her room, Natasha following behind after giving Peter a hug. With the two gone Tony strolled over to the counter and picked up the tablet resting on top of the marble surface.

“Okay, Basso,” Tony declared, bringing up the delivery app. The usuals were ordered, complete with Tony’s protestations that Peter’s pizza with pineapple would lead to him being haunted by Italian ancestors, and by the time the food had arrived and been distributed the pair were on the oversized sofa in the living room with an episode of _The Office_ playing quietly in the background. Every few minutes Tony glanced over at Peter to gauge how his son was feeling, and towards the end of the first episode Peter finally snapped his gaze to meet his dad’s.

“Would you quit it? I’m fine, dad, seriously.”

“You sure?” 

Peter’s expression softened, the mild irritation disappearing. “Yeah, I’m sure. I think it was just the lights or something.” 

Tony reached over to brush a hand through Peter’s hair, resting his hand for a moment against his cheek. “Alright. You going to be okay for school tomorrow?”

The teenager nodded. “Yeah, definitely.”

“TV off, Jarvis,” Tony requested as the episode currently on came to an end. He stretched out with his legs on the ottoman in front of the couch and an arm balanced along the cushioned back of the sofa - less than a minute later Peter’s legs were flopped over the top of his as the teenager reclined back against his pile of pillows. 

“So, tell me about the field trip.”

Peter shrugged in the typical blasé fashion of a teenager. “It was fine - their research department gave the lecture but they obviously held back all of the cool stuff so it was just like an explanation of how their lab works. Also I’m like ninety percent sure I got bitten by something while I was there, we should call OSHA to check for termites.”

Tony pulled a face. “Termites don’t bite people, oh genius child of mine, their deal is wood.”

“Fine, fleas then, whatever - something bit me.”

“Where?” Tony frowned as Peter held right his arm out and pushed the sleeve of the oversized sweatshirt he’d stolen from his Uncle Steve up to expose the skin of his upper arm. There was a small red bump on Peter’s arm just above his elbow. It looked like a mosquito bite but felt more firm when Tony ran his thumb over it gently. “Does it hurt?”

Peter shook his head. “Nah.”

“Just put some Bactine or something on it before you go to bed, alright?” Tony raised his wrist to look at his watch. “Which you should probably do now, it’s almost eleven.” 

Walking upstairs and leaving his son in his room after saying goodnight Tony headed to his own bedroom to get ready for bed. Checking his phone just before he turned the lights out he saw a picture from Natasha in the message chain the two had with Barton of Morgan wearing a novelty Hawkeye sleep shirt and scoffed in disgust at the blatant personal attack. Before he could compose a snarky response another picture popped up of Cooper in an Iron Man pyjama set - _“tell me about it”_ , the attached message read. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying not to be too impressed by myself for meeting my scheduled posting date, but here we are. Thank you so much to everyone who commented on the last chapter, I'm so happy to see that people are enjoying this series! I'd love to know what you think about this chapter :)


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What’s happening?” Tony demanded, ignoring the quaver to his own voice. The medical team continued to move in a flurry of activity around him as though they hadn’t heard him and his eyes widened when he saw the size of the needle Bruce had obtained from Emily’s collection. His hand flew out of its own accord as he stumbled forwards unsteadily and grasped Bruce’s wrist tightly, getting the man’s attention. “Bruce,” he whispered hoarsely, “what’s happening?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this is three days late - sorry about that. Real life, etc etc. I'm hoping to still get chapter four out by this Friday/Saturday (Sunday at the LATEST) to be back on my posting schedule of every Friday. I've loved reading your comments and thoughts on this, I hope you all enjoy this chapter!

Tony walked into the kitchen early the next morning, gravitating over to the just-brewed coffee pot and helping himself to a large mug. He took a few gulps and glanced up at the clock. It was just gone six thirty, and Tony needed to get Peter up soon or he’d be late for school. Since Morgan had wanted her quality time with Auntie Nat time the night before Tony was left with only one child to get ready.

“Jarvis, is Peter up?” Tony cocked an ear towards the ceiling to see if the familiar thuds of his son walking around his room could be heard.

The AI responded in the negative and Tony sighed.

“Track 14, J, blast it.”

There was a pause followed by the tell-tale electric guitar and staccato drumming of eighties rock pounding out through the ceiling from the floor above. Tony smirked.

He waited a few moments and let the music play before taking pity on his teenager. “Okay, cut it. How ‘bout now, is he up?”

“No, sir, Master Peter is still in bed. He doesn’t seem to be stirring.”

The ice cold feeling that flooded Tony’s heart made him think that it had stopped. Before he knew what was happening he found himself halfway up the stairs and sprinting out onto the second floor of the penthouse.

Peter’s door was ajar and Tony hurriedly thrust it open the remainder of the way with enough exertion that the metal handled cracked into the wall as the door swung into it. As soon as his eyes settled on the teenager’s form Tony knew something was wrong. Peter’s skin was flushed, and the sheen of sweat that glistened over his brow covered every part of him. Tony strode over to the bed and pressed his hand against the boy’s forehead, eyes widening at the alarming heat he felt.

“Peter,” he said loudly, placing a hand on Peter’s should and shaking gently as the other cupped the side of his face. “Pete, wake up.”

A soft murmur escaped Peter’s mouth, but when his eyes didn’t open the panic that Tony had been trying to smother since entering the room began to bubble up inside of him.

“Vitals, Jarvis, now.

“Heart rate 130bpm, temperature holding at 104.”

“Oh god.” Tony allowed himself a microsecond of panic before throwing the covers back and lifting his son into his arms. “Get Bruce to medical,  _ now _ , and call the damn elevator.”

Running as quickly as he could manage without dropping or jostling Peter too much Tony got to the end of the hall and stepped into the waiting elevator. He could feel the heat radiating off of Peter’s skin and his own panic began to rise. He lowered his head to press a kiss to Peter’s hair, damp with sweat.

“Come on, come  _ on _ .” The elevator descended at a speed Tony would liken to glacial to the level below the communal Avengers floor, clutching Peter tightly to his chest. They finally reached it, with Tony swearing internally to upgrade the elevators that just moved too fucking slowly, and as soon as the doors opened Bruce was standing in front of them. When his eyes landed on Peter they widened in shock but before he could react his medical professionalism took over.

“Get him on a bed.” He pointed at the gurney that had been wheeled over to the doors before snapping on a pair of latex gloves. Tony hurried out of the elevator car and immediately placed Peter’s limp body down onto the sheet-covered bed. Once his son was no longer in his arms he found himself being moved aside so that Bruce could press a stethoscope to Peter’s chest, the expression on his friend’s face growing distressed as he took his vitals. After a moment he ripped the stethoscope from his ears and wrapped it around his neck before kicking the brake off on the gurney and starting to push it down the hallway. When Bruce had stumbled back onto the grounds of the compound a month after Ultron as Bruce, not the Hulk, Tony had been grateful to see his friend again. That gratitude was nothing compared to what he felt as he watched someone he knew and trusted with his life - with  _ Peter’s _ life - take charge in caring for his son.

“Emily,” Bruce called out loudly over his shoulder, to which a petite blond whom Tony recognised as a nurse appeared. “Get me metamizole and metaprolol and a kit to start an IV line.” The nurse nodded abruptly and spun around on her heel to run to the supply cabinet. Bruce stopped the gurney and changed its trajectory, turning to walk backwards and pull it along after him as he entered a room with members of the medical team prepped and waiting. Without a word being exchanged the gurney was pulled alongside the hospital bed and a tall man Tony recognised as someone who had stitched Clint back together less than two weeks ago moved to stand by Peter’s head. Bruce took position at the teenager’s legs, meeting the other man’s eyes and muttering a countdown of “one, two, three”. On three they each grasped the end of the sheet under Peter and used it to lift the boy onto the bed. The gurney was immediately pulled out of the way, and the nurse - Emily, Tony’s brain supplied - returned with an alarming number of needles and medications. 

“What’s happening?” Tony demanded, ignoring the quaver to his own voice. The medical team continued to move in a flurry of activity around him as though they hadn’t heard him and his eyes widened when he saw the size of the needle Bruce had obtained from Emily’s collection. His hand flew out of its own accord as he stumbled forwards unsteadily and grasped Bruce’s wrist tightly, getting the man’s attention. “Bruce,” he whispered hoarsely, “what’s happening?”

While the man’s expression had been irate at Tony getting hold of him it faded into one of sympathy as he took in fear on Tony’s pale face. He turned, handing off the IV kit to one of the staff behind him, before leading Tony a few feet away from Peter. “His temperature is rising too quickly, and with his heart rate so high there’s a strong chance he might go into cardiac arrest.”

Tony recoiled as though he’d been hit. His mouth opened and closed, as though to form words, but nothing came out as he took in what that meant outside of the clinical terms - his fourteen-year old son might have a heart attack. His breath seemed to leave his lungs in one fell swoop ashe comprehended that fact, something he hadn’t even conceived as a  _ potential _ worst-case scenario for his child before that very moment. Heart attacks were things you worried about people over fifty getting - hell, people like  _ him _ \- not something you had to worry about as a parent when your son wasn’t old enough to get his license. 

Bruce saw the anguish on his face and grasped his shoulders tightly enough to stop his mind from spiralling. “Tony, listen to me - we need to get this under control, so we’ve given him something for the fever and the slow his heart rate down. That’ll buy us some time, alright? How was he last night, did he say anything hurt, was he feeling sick?”

With his brain still running at maximum capacity, circulating through every worst-case scenario he could imagine, he struggled to give a cohesive answer as he stumbled through his explanation with each word blurring into the previous. “He had a migraine yesterday, I picked him up from school after his field trip. He said it was better though, he was fine when he went to bed. God, he was fine, I thought he was okay, why the hell didn’t I check on him again-”

Bruce’s fingers tightened their grip and he gave him a slight shake. “Tony, I need you to focus, alright? Did he say anything else?”

“He was bitten by something? On his arm, above his elbow.”

“Right or left?”

“Right.”

Bruce relinquished his firm hold on his arms and whipped his head around to meet the gaze of the doctor currently monitoring Peter’s vitals. “Check his right arm, is there a bullseye?”

The man complied, removing the remnants of the t-shirt that Tony realised had been cut straight up the middle. “No, but there’s something - looks like a bug bite, no flesh markings.”

“Okay, that rules out malaria,” Bruce murmured. Tony heard the acknowledgement but all he could see was the colorful electrodes now attached to his son’s chest in place of the oversized Midtown Comics shirt he’d worn to sleep in. His friend must have sensed the thrumming anxiety he felt sure was so strong it was radiating outside of his body because he clasped a comforting hand on his back. “That’s a good thing, Tony. He’s up to date on his vaccinations which rules most of the scary stuff out, alright? It’s a process of elimination now, we’ll figure this out.”

An interjection came in a soft female voice. “Metaprolol seems to be working, BP stable at 102.”

Bruce returned to stand beside the machine that the many wires and tubes connected to Peter were feeding in to. He gave a close examination of the monitor and gestured for Tony to come and look. “His heart rate is under control now, that’s great,” he explained once Tony was standing beside him, pointing to the line that had been spiking uncontrollably before. “We have tests we need to run...I want to get an MRI and a c-spine just to check a few things, that’ll take time. Why don’t you go upstairs and get some-” Bruce trailed off as he shifted his gaze from the electronic display to Tony’s face and sighed reluctantly.

“Fine - go sit in the waiting room, Tony. I’ll come get you in an hour.”

Without being entirely clear on the details of how he’d ended up there Tony found himself in one of the fabric chairs in the lounge area. After the first couple of incidents on Avengers missions is had unofficially been repurposed as a waiting room for non-injured members of the team to sit while others were fixed and, in the case of all but Steve, medicated. With no recollection of how he’d ended up in the chair after being in his son’s room he had no clue how much time had passed - what he was aware of, however, was the arrival of Steve and Natasha through the double doors in the entryway of the room. The redhead was holding a cup of coffee that she immediately extended out to him. Tony took it without a word, eyeing the paper bag in Steve’s hand and looking up with half-hearted curiosity.

“Bagels,” Steve explained, holding the bag up and giving it a tiny shake, the brown paper rustling. Tony shook his head and Steve sighed. “Yeah, I figured, but I wanted to bring something just in case you got hungry.” Natasha had taken the seat on the right of Tony’s after handing off the hot coffee and Steve fell into the one on the left of him. 

“I don’t know what happened,” he whispered, “he was okay last night.” 

“What do you need from us?” The question was direct and to the point, as it always was with Natasha. While his initial opinion and affection towards her had been colored by the realisation that she’d been SHIELD, Natasha had ended up being one of three friends in his life who had been witness to a crisis and helped him through it. Rhodey and Happy had a more affectionate method of dealing with Tony when he’d reached his limit but Natasha was no-nonsense and when the only thing on his mind was the image of his son in a hospital bed it was exactly what he needed. He didn’t need to be coddled, he needed problems he could solve in the short-term to keep his mind busy.

“Get Morgan from school,” Tony answered automatically, dragging a hand roughly across his face to clear the tears that had escaped his lower eyelashes, “keep her busy.”  _ Keep her away from where they were trying to keep her brother from having a heart attack at fourteen. _ Not for the first time it seemed like his friend could read his mind just by looking at him and she nodded in comprehension. 

“She’ll stay with me again tonight,” she resolved __

“Thank you.”

She stood up with the elegance that she always seemed to exude and placed her hand on his back. “Are you okay?” Natasha asked softly.

“No.”

Steve leaned forward, a hand coming to rest on Tony’s knee in comfort. “Is there anything we can do, other than keeping you company here?” The unspoken subtext struck Tony as he realised why they had arrived so quickly - they’d been summoned by Bruce, of course, and while in most situations he would have resented the suggestion that he needed babysitting the last thing he wanted at that moment was to be alone. He thought through what Steve had asked. Tony opened his mouth to say ‘no’ but the word caught on its way out as he was struck by something. He took a deep breath and turned to meet Steve’s eyes, the deep concern in them darkening the icy blue. “Can you go get my phone?” he requested, clearing his throat and trying to ignore the burning sensation at the back of his eyes. “I need to call Pep.”


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce sighed. “The blood work came back with some markers that point to an infection but it doesn’t line up with anything I’ve seen before.”
> 
> “Alright, which means?”
> 
> “Honestly? Right now, I don’t know. All we can do is treat the symptoms until we figure out how to treat the infection.”
> 
> Tony looked at the wires and electrodes scattered across the hospital bed, attached to his son’s bare skin and running across his face and behind his ears.
> 
> “Just sit with your son, Tony,” Bruce murmured quietly, “when I know anything else, I’ll tell you, okay?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is late. SO late. I have no excuse other than the fact that I struggled ridiculously with this. I'm still not happy with it, but I've rewritten it three times and this is what I keep coming back to. Sorry for the wait!

_“The MRI and c-spine came back clear. If we don’t start to see an improvement we need to think about doing a lumbar puncture and maybe consider biopsies.”_

_Tony pressed his hand gently to Peter’s forehead. “His temperature is going down, his skin doesn’t feel so hot anymore. That’s a good thing, right?”_

_“Tony,” Bruce had looked at him with his mouth set in a grim line, “that’s because we’re running cooling IV fluids. If we took those away his temperature would spike again, this is just to stop that from happening.”_

A shaky breath escaped Tony’s lips as he leaned forward. He pressed his lips to Peter’s forehead, feeling the sting of his earlier - untimely - relief. Once Bruce had let him back into his son’s room after the battery of tests he’d wanted had been run his first thought had been that things were already better. The disappointment had been nothing, however, compared to the phone call he’d had to make to his wife. After Steve and Natasha had come to keep him company in the period of time before Bruce had allowed him to back into Peter’s room he’d reached his wife at the beginning of her day in California. 

_“Pep?”_

_She had answered in a slightly flustered voice. “Hi honey - I’m just on my way to a meeting, I thought we were going to talk tonight when the kids were back? How’s Peter, did he feel up to school today after yesterday?”_

_Tony took a deep breath to ground himself and try to keep his speech steady and free of the panic-induced tremor he’d felt. “Something happened. With Peter.”_

_The footsteps on the other end of the phone suddenly got faster and with the audible slam of a door the background noise he’d been hearing had disappeared. “Tony, what’re you talking about? You’re scaring me...is Peter alright? Did his migraine get worse?” Fear laced its way through Pepper’s words._

_“When I went to wake him up for school this morning he was burning up, and his heart was going like crazy,” Tony explained as un-clinically as he could, knowing that the medical jargon was scarier to hear than the everyday descriptive. “They’ve been running all kinds of tests on him, Bruce said they should have the results soon. They don’t know what it is, Pep, but it’s bad.”_

_“How bad, Tony?” Pepper whispered._

The rest of the conversation had been a discussion of organising a plane to get Pepper back to New York as soon as possible. Once he’d hung up Tony had begun pacing back and forth in the hallway, ignoring Natasha’s requests for him to sit back down and Steve’s offers to get him something to eat or drink. Bruce had eventually emerged from the swinging doors at the end of the corridor and Tony had pounced on him immediately.

_“I want to see him.” It wasn’t said as a request but as a demand, offering no compromise or empty pleasantries. Bruce’s brow crumpled, deep lines forming on his forehead._

_“I’m going to take you to see him, but I need you to understand that he looks worse than he did when you brought him in and he’s under a lot of medication now.” His explanation was slow, eyes wide as he looked directly at Tony. “He’s not sedated, but he’s coming in and out of consciousness. Do you understand that?”_

_“Don’t talk to me like a fucking child, Banner, let me see my kid,” Tony snapped impatiently, his eyes darting from Bruce to the door that was concealing his son from view. He felt a large hand on his shoulder, the presence of its warmth and weight offering a sense of grounding._

_“What’s going on, Bruce?” Steve asked seriously, his tone more controlled and less accusatory than Tony’s._

_Bruce turned his gaze to Steve before looking back at Tony. “There are a lot of tubes and wires, I just want you to be prepared. We have an oxygen mask on him for now, but if things don’t get better we need to consider ventilation.” As he finished explaining he turned his back to Tony and walked over to the heavy door, pressing down on the handle and pushing it open. Tony registered Steve and Natasha hanging back as he and Bruce passed through the double doors and into the first room on the right. The moment his eyes caught sight of his hyper-active fourteen year old his heart faltered. “Jesus. Peter,” he gasped out, catching himself on the door frame as his legs threatened to give out from under him. Bruce gently took hold of his arm and led him forward, stopping a foot short of the bed and pointing at the clear tubing running under Peter’s nose._

_“That’s connected to the oxygen mask,” he explained before shifting his finger to gesture at the red and black wires stuck to the gauze-covered circles on his chest. “Those are heart rate and blood pressure monitors, just because they’re more effective than the finger monitors. That one,” he moved, talking about the last main tube coming from the port at Peter’s elbow, “is the IV giving him the medication keeping control over his temperature and heart rate.”_

_Tony’s eyes stung with tears at the incomprehensible site of his son hooked up to all of the devices in front of him in a hospital bed. He felt Bruce give him a gentle push towards the chair beside the bed and slumped down into it. The scientist inhaled deeply, holding the tablet in his hand tightly as he began speaking without preamble. “We managed to get his fever and heart rate under control, so the cardiac risk isn’t a top priority now,” he explained as he took a cursory look over the monitors that were simultaneously being displayed onto the screen in his hands._

_Tony cocked an eyebrow in expectation. “Okay, so what the hell is wrong with him?”_

_Bruce sighed. “The blood work came back with some markers that point to an infection but it doesn’t line up with anything I’ve seen before.”_

_“Alright, which means?”_

_“Honestly? Right now, I don’t know. All we can do is treat the symptoms until we figure out how to treat the infection.”_

_Tony looked at the wires and electrodes scattered across the hospital bed, attached to his son’s bare skin and running across his face and behind his ears._

_“Just sit with your son, Tony,” Bruce murmured quietly, “when I know anything else, I’ll tell you, okay?”_

Hours later and he was in the same position beside his son - Natasha had told him at some point earlier that she was going to pick Morgan up. His brain didn’t have the space to contemplate the information outside of the confirmation that someone was looking out for the little girl while he was with her brother. Rhodey had called and said that he was on his way from DC and Steve was currently perched in a chair by the door. Every now and then he’d ask Tony if he needed anything, a concerned sigh able to be heard each time Tony did nothing more than shake his head. One of his hands remained clasped around one of Peter’s while he carded through the dark brown hair with the other.

* * *

The vibrating phone in his pocket drew Clint’s attention away from the ruins of the toaster oven in front of him. Pulling it out he glanced at the caller ID and brought it to his ear. “Did you know it was possible for a kid to kill an appliance in less than a minute?” he asked curiously as he surveyed the smouldering, melted remains of Cooper’s Paw Patrol figures. “I think that’s got to be some kind of new record.” 

“ _Clint_.”

No more than the single word was needed for him to be able to read Natasha’s tone. He subconsciously shifted into a defensive posture, his back straightening as his grip tightened around the phone. “What happened?” He was halfway to his laptop sitting on the kitchen counter with the intent of pulling up any breaking news he’d missed that required action when the answer to his question halted his progress across the wooden floor.

“ _It’s Peter - we don’t know what it is, but he’s sick_.”

Clint’s heart sank. “How sick?” He knew the question was redundant. People weren’t called across state borders when one of the kids got the flu.

“ _He’s on oxygen at the moment, Bruce is talking about needing to do a lumbar puncture_ ,” she broke off suddenly. When she spoke again he could hear the measured restraint to her words. “ _It’s not good, Clint_.”

Laura walked into the kitchen, a quizzical expression on her face as she saw him on the phone. He held out an arm and she walked over to him and leaned against his chest while he wrapped it around her shoulders. “How’re Tony and Pepper?” At the mention of their friends’ names Laura looked up at him abruptly.

Natasha exhaled wearily. “ _They’re just trying to process everything, it isn’t easy being on different coasts. Steve is sitting with him in Peter’s room now, I just came upstairs to get some stuff for him and bring some food that he won’t eat._ ” It was spoken as a complaint in a tone that people who didn’t know Natasha would hear as bored but Clint could read the coping mechanisms hiding in the subtext that she no longer hid from him. Natasha was incapable of sitting still in crisis, her hands and mind needed to be busy to keep them from her auto-pilot default of expecting the worst case scenario.

He shook his head, releasing the arm around Laura’s shoulders to pull through his hair. “Why the hell are you still in the tower, why haven’t you taken him to the medical facility at the compound?” he demanded. “Isn’t it better than the one in the city?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, an uncharacteristic event he wasn’t used to when he talked to Natasha. She inhaled deeply, the sound crackling over the encrypted line. “ _Clint, there’s a fifty/fifty chance of this ending with the worst case scenario.”_ The veiled desolation in Natasha’s voice felt like an ice-cold dagger in his gut. _“Bruce wants to make sure that he’s close enough to a major hospital that if we need it…”_

“There’s a morgue and a coroner,” he finished in stunned disbelief. “Fuck.” The same kid he’d taught to hit a target with a Nerf gun, the one that he’d taught to throw a proper right-hook not three months ago, was fighting for his life and all Clint could think was ‘ _not him’_. The damp he suddenly felt on his shirt had him looking down at his wife, a hand clamped over her mouth as tears escaped the corners of her eyes and marked where she’d been pressed against his side - she’d clearly caught up with the conversation.

There was a sigh. _“There’s a storm hovering over the west coast and most of the middle between us and California - Pepper’s stranded in Malibu.”_

“Fucking hell. Laura’ll call her, for whatever good that’ll do.”

_“Can’t make it any worse for her than being away from her child with no means of getting back to him.”_

“And Morgan’s okay? Does she know?”

 _“She knows that Peter is sick but not the extent of it -_ we _don’t even know the extent of it. I picked her up from school, and she’s been with Happy since we got back. I just don’t think Tony can face telling her, mainly because he doesn’t know what to say when she asks when Peter’s getting better.”_

“Fuck.” Clint and Tony had started off on an uneven footing when it came to their friendship, neither being particularly fond of the other, but once they’d bonded over the mutual connection of their families and children they’d gotten closer. Even after the disaster of Ultron Clint wouldn’t hesitate before saying that, after Laura and Natasha, Tony was probably his closest friend.

“ _I just figured you’d want to know._ ”

“Keep me updated.” Clint tossed his phone down onto the counter and wrapped himself fully around Laura in a tight embrace. “I need to call Tony,” he murmured into Laura’s hair, his lips pressed against it. His eyes were closed and he felt rather than saw the slight nod of her head that she gave.

“I need to call Pepper.” She pulled back, turning away from Clint to go and unplug her phone from where it had been charging by the coffee machine. Watching her walk out of the room into the den Clint sighed, rubbing a calloused hand over the back of his neck. While he wanted to call Tony to speak to his friend himself he knew that wouldn’t provide any assistance. One of the reasons he and Natasha understood one another so well was due to the links their similarities created - he wasn’t able to sit around and do nothing when help was still needed. Taking a moment to think he picked his phone back up to see if he could help with at least one of the problems. 

* * *

“You need a haircut, bud.” Tony stroked his hands through Peter’s hair, the ends now at the point where the unruly strands were in his eyes when they weren’t pushed back. If he closed his eyes and blocked out the rhythmic beeping coming from several of the machines his son was connected to Tony could almost pretend that Peter was just asleep. With his eyes open it was harder to avoid the truth - there was something wrong with Peter, and he wasn’t getting any better. He knew what the vitals being displayed across the LCD screens meant and that the way the numbers had been changing wasn’t good. Peter’s body temperature was climbing again, and he was fading in and out of consciousness without any real awareness of his surroundings.

A trickle of sweat rolled down the teenager’s forehead. Tony reached over to the rolling table on the other side of Peter’s bed to lift a washcloth out of the bowl of water sitting on its surface. He clasped it in both hands and wrung it out to get rid of the excess water before wiping it gently across Peter’s brow. There was a soft groan, and Tony saw Peter’s eyes flutter as they had been for the past hour. 

“It’s alright, baby,” he murmured, thumb running over his cheekbones, “dad is here, it’s going to be okay.”

There was a _click_ of the latch on the door accompanied but a carefully deliberate set of footsteps. “He isn’t getting better, is he?” Tony asked, addressing the new entrant to the room without turning around.

Bruce walked around to Tony’s line of sight, kneeling down beside his chair. “No, Tony, he isn’t.” 

Tony nodded slowly. His gaze remained on his son’s ashen face, pale and clammy with a thin sheen of sweat with the only tint coming from the bright fever spots on his cheeks. “So what now?” His knuckles were white around the damp terry cloth, a feather-light touch moving it across Peter’s hairline.

Bruce stopped Tony’s ministrations by placing a hand over his friend’s. “While they’re fighting the infection in his bloodstream his organs are working overtime, the biggest risk is that they’re going to start failing. We can make this less of a risk by giving them less to do, but it means putting him on the ventilator under complete sedation.”

“You mean a coma.”

“A medically induced coma,” Bruce corrected, as though that made rendering his son deliberately unconscious any less horrifying. 

“What are the risks?”

“Honestly?” Bruce rubbed a hand wearily across his eyes, removing his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose before looking back at Tony. “Less than letting his organs start to shut down because they can’t keep him alive and fight this infection we know nothing about at the same time. It isn’t like a general anaesthetic Tony, this is heavily monitored and tailored specifically to him. There are always risks with putting someone under but the risks of keeping him conscious are far greater.”

As someone with an IQ above that of even the most intelligent of the average population Tony wasn’t used to taking longer than a moment to process information. The notion of putting his son on a ventilator? It didn’t just flummox him, it was as if his brain refused to comprehend that information because it just shouldn’t be happening. “When do we need to decide?” he countered quietly. 

Bruce stood up, his knees popping at the motion of his legs straightening. The phone in his pocket let out a chime and he extracted it, glancing over the message on the screen. “Helen is running the final set of cultures on his blood work,” he relayed to Tony, “it’ll take at least twenty minutes to get the results, I’ll come back then.” Ghosting a hand over Tony’s shoulder once more Bruce crept back to the door and left Tony with Peter. Less than five minutes later he could hear someone walking down the hall - Bruce had left the door open. He braced himself for someone to come and give him another pep talk, the tension corded across his shoulders as he stroked Peter’s hair. 

“Tony.”

For the first time since he’d come into the room Tony turned away from Peter to look behind him at the doorway. He slumped under the feeling of relief that washed over him at the sight of his best friend against the backdrop of the white hospital walls and the heavy wooden door. The airman’s eyes flitted across him and took in Peter’s prone figure under the thin blankets on the bed. After a cursory once over the man was pulling the chair from beside the door, the one Steve had inhabited until about ten minutes ago, to Tony’s side and planting himself down in it. He placed a hand on Peter’s leg, the Air Force ring that the boy loved gleaming under the fluorescents. 

“They want to put him on a ventilator,” Tony confessed wearily. A harsh laugh escaped his lips and he sat back roughly against the cushioned support of the chair. “They want me to put my kid under, let some fucking machine keep him alive and force his lungs to work. In the meantime, my wife is on the other side of the country and is devastated but I can’t do anything about that either.”

“You aren't alone in this.” Rhodey spoke softly in a voice that made him think of the 20-year old who had held him upright at his parents’ funeral after he’d gotten plastered the night before, the colonel who’d held his hand when he’d stepped off of a military plane after three months in captivity, the man who’d been the first one to hold both of his children after him and Pepper. “I’m here, one of your best friends is sitting in your living room with Morgan, and there’s a group of people who’ve set up camp in the waiting room to support you.”

“I can’t lose him Rhodey,” Tony whispered hoarsely. He turned to face the man who was his brother in all but blood. “I can’t lose him,” he repeated, shaking his head, “and I don’t know how to save him. I’m his dad and I have one job in life - keep him safe. How am I supposed to protect him from this when no one can tell me what _this_ is?”

“Is he alone?” The question was so unexpected and sharp that Tony flinched what he perceived as an accusation of abandonment. 

“Of course not.” 

Rhodey shrugged, hands held up to appease him. “Has he been alone since you brought him in?”

“Bruce made me leave so they could run tests.”

“Okay, since then, has he been alone?”

“No.” Tony looked back at his son, running his thumb over the back of the hand that wasn’t connected to an IV port. 

When Rhodey spoke again it was in the same gentle tone he’d started with, clasping a hand on Tony’s shoulder. “Then you’re doing what a dad needs to do. You’re here with him, and that’s all he needs from you. Let Bruce do his thing, let the rest of the med team do what you pay them to do, and in the meantime all _you_ need to do is be his dad. Sit here, hold his hand, be here with him.”

“It isn’t enough,” Tony whispered. He leant forward to press his lips to Peter’s forehead, closing his eyes and pretending that he couldn’t feel the burning heat being radiated from his skin while the steady chirps of the heart monitor broke the silence of the room. 


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As he looked at his daughter Tony could see the physical reaction she had to seeing her brother in his hospital bed - she jerked to a stop, hand tugging on Tony’s as her movements were halted. A tiny gasp escaped her as she let out a shocked “oh”, her hand dropping from where Tony held it as her grip loosened. Tony crouched down beside her. “Peter’s sick,” she breathed, her deep brown eyes wide and her brow furrowed. As he had expected, it was only in this moment as she was face-to-face with Peter that she was able to fully understand how sick her brother was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this late? Yes. Am I sorry? Also yes. I have no excuse other than life being a complete and total shit show. I really appreciate everyone who has left a comment about this story, you guys are so sweet, I hope this was worth the wait.

“Morgan wants to see you.”

The soft interruption in the otherwise quiet room, excluding the steady _woosh_ the ventilator made with each breath it forced into Peter’s lungs, had Tony turning to look at Steve.

“How is she?” he rasped, voice rough from disuse. It had been two days since Tony had brought Peter down to the medical wing - in those forty eight hours Tony had yet to leave his son’s side without being directly instructed by Bruce with the exception of using the ensuite bathroom. He was able to let his worry for Peter cloud the guilt that was building with his neglecting Morgan. She had continued spending the night with Natasha, although Nat had returned the girl to the family’s floor and slept in the guestroom there to try and return her to as normal a routine as possible. Tony knew that a rota had been put in place to ensure that the girl was never alone and it was something on the growing list of reasons he’d never be able to express the gratitude he had towards the others. 

Steve walked over, sitting in the chair beside Tony that had up until recently been occupied by Rhodey. “She’s okay,” he answered honestly, meeting Tony’s gaze. “We were coloring after breakfast and she just wanted to know when she could see her dad again.”

The words were like a punch to the gut, forcing the air out of his lungs in a harsh blast. “This is fucked up.” 

Steve sighed, reaching over to place a hand on his arm. “Tony-”

Slumping backwards in his chair he shook his head dejectedly. “No, it is. I have two kids and I’ve let both of them down. I haven’t seen my daughter in two days and my son,” Tony broke off, dropping his head and exhaling shakily, “my son is in a hospital bed on the other side of the country from his mother and I haven’t been able to figure out how to make him better.” He leaned forward again, his back stiff from his sentry duty as his joints protested the movement. He ignored the aches and brushed a gentle hand over Peter’s hair. Natasha had brought a comb down with her the last time she’d come and murmured to Peter softly while she brushed the sweat-tangled curls back from his face. 

Steve produced a water bottle from the bag that Tony hadn’t noticed he’d brought with him. He twisted the cap off and held the open bottle out. “Has Pepper checked in?” he asked as Tony gratefully accepted the drink. It wasn’t until he’d taken his first sip that he’d realised how thirsty he had been and how much of a relief it was on his dry throat after breathing in the disinfectant-soaked air for so long. 

Tony drank until the bottle was empty when it was suddenly removed from his grasp. Steve was on his feet and carried the bottle over to the filter jug sitting on the table by the door. Once it was full he handed it back to Tony, this time with the cap as though he was satisfied that he’d drunk the bottle. Tony took a couple of sips before replacing the plastic cap and setting it down on the floor. “We just got off the phone,” he confirmed. Pepper called and checked in each hour with the understanding that if anything changed Tony would call her. Her calls always came to Tony first and every other time it would then be transferred to whoever was with Morgan so that she could talk to her.

Steve lowered himself back into his chair and almost hesitantly drew in a breath, taking a moment before speaking. “How is she doing?” he ventured cautiously. 

“She blames herself. I didn’t want to let him go on the damn field trip in the first place, she was the one that made the decision when he said he wanted to go.”

Steve eyed him carefully. “Do you blame her?” he asked quietly.

“At first? Yeah,” Tony returned honestly, “then I stop being crazy and hated myself for thinking it, even for a second. This isn’t her fault. There’s nothing in this world that Pepper loves more than the kids.” Tony paused, running the hand that wasn’t holding onto Peter’s through his bedraggled hair. “This isn’t anyone’s fault but Osborne’s, and he’ll pay for it.”

“Has Bruce figured it out then, that is was something at Oscorp that made him sick?”

Running his thumb across the back of Peter’s knuckles - the skin was dry, he made a note to text Natasha to bring some lotion down later - Tony’s eyes flicked up to the monitors mocking him with the unchanging vitals. “We have no idea what it was that bit him, or whatever caused the mark on his arm. The only thing we can guess, since there isn’t a single other biological indicator, is that they’re further in the bio-engineering than they want everyone to believe. Rhodey has been trying to get it out of Osborne but the asshole won’t budge and swears that they’re clean.” 

The phone on the table beside Peter’s bed vibrated again, more than the fourth time it had done so since Steve walked in. Tony watched the man give it an appraising look this time after he’d ignored it for the last few before shifting his eyes to Tony’s. “Someone wants to get hold of you,” he remarked quietly, “I’m guessing whoever it is you haven’t told them what’s going on?”

Tony scoffed in disgust, smoothing down the sheet folded under Peter’s arms. “Just some up-and-coming asshole military general who wants me on board with some legislation.”

Steve frowned. “What kind of something?” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Tony evaded, “it’ll be a big fucking problem when it becomes a problem, but right now isn’t that time.” He closed his eyes, his mind racing. When he opened them he looked at his friend. “Could you bring Morgan down? Just to the waiting room, and let me know when you’re here?”

Steve smiled and stood up, pushing the chair back. “Sure thing, Tony,” he agreed. Tony turned back to Peter but when he heard the door being pushed open he called out to Steve.

“Thank you.” The words were quiet, but both men knew they weren’t just referring to the task Tony had asked him to do in that moment. There was only a fraction of a pause before Steve responded just as softly.

“Family doesn’t have to say thanks, Tony.” 

Ten minutes passed before Tony’s phone chimed with the message from Steve that he had brought Morgan down to the waiting room. Stowing the phone in his back pocket he stood up, wincing at the tightness in his muscles. Leaning over the bed he ducked his head and pressed a kiss to his Peter’s forehead. “I’ll be back in a sec, kiddo,” he assured in a whisper, “but if you felt like waking up when I bring Morgan in here that would be okay.” His eyes watched his son’s face with wishful expectation but there wasn’t a flicker of recognition from the teenager. Sighing, and ignoring the growing sense of dread in his gut, Tony ignored the stiffness in his legs as he crossed the threshold of Peter’s room to the wide corridor outside it.

“Daddy!” Morgan squealed in delight, pulling her hand from Steve’s and launching herself down the tiled hallway into Tony’s arms. He crouched down with his knees on the floor just in time to catch Morgan as she threw her arms around his neck. 

“Hi, baby,” he murmured into her hair falling across his face as she burrowed into his shoulder. 

“I missed you.” Her words were muffled by his shirt but it didn’t dull the stab he felt to his heart. The guilt he’d been pushing down threatened to surface, but the returning thought why he’d been absent, of his kid on life support at the end of the hall, silenced it before it could take hold. 

“I missed you too, Morg,” Tony murmured. He gently pried her arms off of his shoulders and pushed back slightly so that he could see her face. Raising a hand to brush the strands of hair out of her eyes he cupped his palm to her cheek. “Uncle Steve and Auntie Nat have told you what’s going on, haven’t they?”

Morgan nodded slowly, her brow crinkling adorably. “Peter is sick,” she replied slowly, enunciating each word carefully.

“Right. Do you understand what that means, that it isn’t like when you got sick before Christmas last year, or when Lila got the chickenpox last summer?”

“Peter is _really_ sick.” The adjective was drawn out in the way that young children spoke when they were trying to comprehend something bigger than they could grasp. Tony knew that there was no way to prepare the seven-year old for Peter’s condition before she saw him.

“Yeah.” Tony drew air in through his teeth, steeling himself. “I need you to listen to me, okay?” He wrapped a hand gently around each of Morgan’s shoulders, focusing the girl. “There are lots of tubes, and there’s one coming out of Petey’s mouth that’s helping him breathe, alright? It looks scary, but he’s asleep so it isn’t so bad for him.”

Taking her tiny hand in his own Tony led his daughter down the hallway, feeling the eyes of Steve and Natasha behind them. Once they were outside of the door before Peter’s his ears picked up light footsteps following slowly behind them. Not for the first time since the start of everything he found himself thinking about how grateful he was for the love that the others had for his children and how quickly Peter and Morgan had taken to them. He knew that if it was needed, if something happened or if it was just too much for his kid, Nat would be there to get Morgan out of the room quickly. 

As he looked at his daughter Tony could see the physical reaction she had to seeing her brother in his hospital bed - she jerked to a stop, hand tugging on Tony’s as her movements were halted. A tiny gasp escaped her as she let out a shocked _“oh_ ”, her hand dropping from where Tony held it as her grip loosened. Tony crouched down beside her. “Peter’s _sick_ ,” she breathed, her deep brown eyes wide and her brow furrowed. As he had expected, it was only in this moment as she was face-to-face with Peter that she was able to fully understand how sick her brother was. Morgan took a tentative step forward, turning back to look at her father questioningly. Tony nodded, and she continued to tip-toe over to the bed. She reached out a small hand and gently touched Peter’s own with her pointer finger. 

“He’s cold,” she stated quietly. Tony stood up and walked over to her, placing a hand under each of her armpits and lifting her onto the chair before pushing it flush against the bed. 

“I know,” he murmured, pressing his lips to the top of her head, “I know he is.”

“Morgan, do you want to read Peter one of the books you brought down?” Natasha walked into the room as she asked her question with a small blue backpack held by the top handle from one of her hands, the other hand clasped around Morgan’s beloved stuffed Hulk. The girl’s arms raised automatically without a word and Natasha deposited the plushie into her lap; Morgan’s arms wrapped around it instinctively, the top of her chin coming down to rest on the soft black hair on top of Hulk’s head. Tony reached out and took the backpack from Natasha with a smile of gratitude before she left back through the door. He unzipped it and pulled out the children’s books inside - Morgan was an advanced reader for her age, as Peter had been, but whenever she got sick she found comfort in the books she’d been read when she was younger. Morgan unwound her arms from her Hulk and Tony handed the small stack of books over to her. 

“I’m going to call mom, but I’ll be right outside okay?” he assured the seven-year old. Morgan nodded slowly, eyes focused on the books in her hands. She flipped through them like vinyl records before extracting one from the pile and pushing the others to the side on the bedside table. The phone in Tony’s pocket started to vibrate and with one last look at his children he walked out of the room, easing the door closed behind him. Pulling the phone out of his pocket he answered the call. “Hey Pep,” he greeted quietly, moving to stand in front of the observation window into Peter’s room. He could see Morgan’s lips moving as she narrated the story to Peter, red hair falling from the loose ponytail that someone had pulled it back into. 

_“How is he?”_ As with all of the other calls, Pepper wanted immediate assurance that their son was no worse than the last time she checked in.

“No change,” he replied, “but Steve brought Morgan down, she’s in with him right now.”

_“How is she handling it?”_

“She’s reading him that book he was insufferable about when she was born, the one about saying goodnight to everything?”

“ _Goodnight Moon_.” Tony could hear the smile in his wife’s voice - they’d both been ready to burn every copy of the book in existence by the time Peter had grown bored of it.

“Yeah, that one.” 

_“She loved hearing that one,_ ” Pepper murmured, her mind no doubt going to the same place Tony’s had, memories of seeing their son sitting beside Morgan’s crib, later her first big-girl bed, reading it to her over and over. “ _Huh,_ ” Pepper muttered, “ _hold on, there’s someone at the door.”_ A clatter on the other end indicated that Pepper had set the phone down while she went to see who was visiting her room in the hotel. Tony expected it to be room service or the cleaning team, something requiring only a few seconds of interaction, but when the echo of a second voice - male, from the sounds of it - was interspersed with the muffled exclamations of confusion from Pepper it sent a prickle of anxiety through Tony.

“Pepper?” he called out loudly, his grip tightening on the phone held to his ear. There was a sudden commotion at the other end of the line before the voice he hadn’t been able to place spoke directly into the phone.

_“We’ll be with you in six hours, tops.”_

Tony’s eyes blew wide open and he thrust out a hand to steady himself against the wall. “Barton?” he exhaled in shock.

The archer let out a single chuckle. _“What, you think you’re the only person with connections? Turns out my connections are better than yours because I can get them to reopen air space for exactly one aircraft.”_ The teasing in Clint’s tone was light, and in the background he could hear the distant sounds of drawers being opened and closed as Pepper was probably haphazardly throwing her things together. Tony couldn’t bring himself to do more than just stand in the hallway for a moment, mouth open in disbelief, before he finally snapped out of it. 

“Give the phone back to Pepper,” he barked, his mind racing too much from the emotional whiplash to be polite.

The sounds of a phone being passed to different hands came and went, and soon Tony’s ears were met with the uneven gasps of tearful breathing.

“Honey, you hear that?” Tony breathed, the tears building in his eyes escaping as he heard a sob over the line. “Six hours and you’ll be here, you’ll be here with Peter.”

“ _Tell him I’m coming_ ,” Pepper demanded, voice cracking. 

Tony brushed the tears off his face roughly. “I will, I promise,” he assured, “now go get on a plane and don’t let Barton take any side trips.”

Ending the call, Tony stood and just stared at his phone in utter disbelief for a moment. When the fact that Pepper was finally going to be coming back to see Peter was finally making its way through his brain as something that was going to happen in a determined period of time he crept over to the door of Peter’s room and opened it as quietly as possible. Morgan was still reading, having moved on to a different book, and she only took a moment to glance up at her father before continuing with the story.

“In two straight lines they broke their bread and brushed their teeth and went to bed,” Morgan recited. Tony pulled up a chair on the other side of Peter’s bed and took hold of his hand. 

“Mom’s coming home,” he bent down and whispered into Peter’s ear, “and mom makes everything better, doesn’t she?” Tony sat back and listened to Morgan read about little girls leaving the house in “two straight lines, rain or shine” as he began the countdown for six hours from that moment in his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus points for anyone who ID-ed the children's book without needing to Google it, one of my all-time favorites. Also, I started writing this series and Morgan before Endgame came out so my Morgan has red hair because Pepper's hair is too beautiful not to be passed on to one of their children.


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This is my fault.”
> 
> The admission was spoken softly in a matter-of-fact tone. Tony shifted in his seat so that he was facing Pepper, mindful of the sleeping girl resting on his shoulder. “No, you’re not allowed to think that,” he contradicted, “there’s only room for one irrational guilt complex in this relationship and I called dibs on it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me begin with an apology - I am so sorry this took so long. I had absolutely no intention of letting this sit for six months, and I'm sorry I wasn't able to update sooner. Honestly, I don't even have a good excuse other than life being the same old shitshow it always is, I just wasn't handling it as well as usual. I wish I had a better reason, or something more to offer, but that's reality and life in a nutshell. 
> 
> There's one more chapter to go after this, and then the good news is that I have almost 2 complete stories to come after this for this series that are pretty much ready to go. 
> 
> If you've stuck around and waited to read this, or if you've been one of the really sweet people to write me about this story - thank you. Truly, sincerely, thank you. As always, an unending amount of gratitude to my ultimate soulmate Bekah who proof read and listened to me whine/motivated me/made me feel happy with my writing when I hated every word.

Three days. 

Tony had been sat in the ugly grey chair beside his son’s unconscious form for three days while the entire medical team struggled to find out what was wrong with Peter. Nothing had changed, his condition having seemingly plateaued with a fever that wasn’t shifting up or down, and a breathing pattern that triggered the ventilator every now and then but wasn’t strong enough to take him off of it. Morgan was curled up in Tony’s lap as he rocked her gently, the seven-year old having fallen asleep in the past hour. Pepper had called him just before the flight Clint had commandeered took off to let him know she was on her way; Tony had then sent Morgan upstairs with Natasha to eat something, take a bath and spend a couple of hours being a kid instead of being cooped up in the hospital wing. She’d come back down with her aunt five hours later in her pyjamas with damp hair and her Hulk lovey snuggled tightly against her chest. It had taken all of ten minutes for her to get situated in his lap and drift off - Tony knew he should ask someone to take her upstairs or at least settle her in an actual bed, but the selfish part of him that found comfort in hearing her steady breathing stopped him.

Time passed and eventually the ambient noises that Tony had been tuned to for the past three days were interrupted by the sound of footsteps running down the tiled hallway outside of Peter’s room. Tony craned his neck to look at the door and almost dropped Morgan from his lap from the sudden loss of stress and tension in his muscles at the sight of Pepper walking through the door. Her eyes were red-rimmed, hair loosely pulled back into a hasty knot, and the t-shirt and jeans she was wearing looked rumpled. She glanced at Tony and Morgan with wide eyes but her gaze soon shifted to the hospital bed they were sitting beside. Tony watched as her bottom lip trembled and she took gentle steps towards Peter. A chair that had been on the other side of the bed had been shifted to where Tony was sat with Morgan; Pepper fell back into the seat, reaching forward immediately to grasp Peter’s hand.

“My baby,” she breathed, a hand ghosting over Peter’s face as her thumb brushed his cheek. The skin around her fingernails was red and raw, a nervous habit she’d had for as long as Tony had known her. He knew that as hard as the ordeal had been for him it must have been a completely different ballgame for his wife as she was stranded on the opposite side of the country when she couldn’t be there with their son. He watched as she took a stuttering breath, her eyes closed as her fingers wrapped around Peter’s slim wrist with two fingers pressed into his pulse point. “This is my fault.”

The admission was spoken softly in a matter-of-fact tone. Tony shifted in his seat so that he was facing Pepper, mindful of the sleeping girl resting on his shoulder. “No, you’re not allowed to think that,” he contradicted, “there’s only room for one irrational guilt complex in this relationship and I called dibs on it.”

A tear made its way down her cheek. “You didn’t want him to go, the only reason he was there is because I said that he could.”

“I didn’t want him to start school if you remember, and I  _ definitely _ recall throwing down the gauntlet for his first sleepover. Honey, you’re a rational parent that wants their kids to experience life.”

Pepper shook her head miserably, the back of her hand not holding Peter’s coming up to wipe her eyes. “Has anything changed?”

Tony sighed. “No. Bruce can’t decide if that’s a good or bad thing, but at least he isn’t getting worse.”

Tony’s eyes met his wife’s and he could see them casting a glance at his appearance. Her forehead creased in concern as she appraised him. “Are you okay?”

“I’ve never been so scared, Pep.” Tony confessed in a quiet voice, his grip unconsciously tightening on Morgan. “I was watching them do all these things to him and I was  _ useless _ . I’m supposed to fix things, that’s what engineers do...what’s the point if I can’t fix him?”

Whether in reaction to her father’s hold on her or the conversation happening in the room around her, their daughter whined quietly in her sleep and drew their attention. 

“We should put her to bed,” Pepper murmured, standing up from her seat to move around to be beside Tony. She stroked Morgan’s red hair back behind her little ear, tracing her thumb down the side of her soft cheek. 

Tony nodded in agreement, looking towards the doorway. “I’m sure one of the interlopers is still down here.” Pepper reprimanded him with a lighthearted “ _ Tony _ ” at the remark before pushing the door open and glancing down the hall. Her appearance outside of the room must have caught the attention of the on-guard Avenger for the evening, as Steve appeared seconds later.

“Would you mind taking her upstairs?” Pepper asked regretfully as she came back over to Tony and Morgan. She ducked down and kissed her daughter on the cheek as Steve made his way over to them before straightening up and rubbing a gentle hand on Morgan’s back over her pastel-colored pyjamas. Tony knew without needing to so much as look in his wife’s direction that the forlorn tone of voice was due to the desire to keep both of her children as close as possible, but a tired Morgan was a grumpy and difficult Morgan. Having the little girl sleep in her own bed was better for everyone. 

Steve smiled kindly at Pepper. “Of course.” He knelt down next to Tony and lifted Morgan into his own arms. Her head lolled against his shoulder once he was upright and he manoeuvred himself with gentle care towards the exit. 

“Call if she needs anything,” Tony demanded quietly as he stretched, his elbows and knees popping in complaint as he stretched them out in front of him for the first time in too long.

Steve rolled his eyes “Obviously,” he replied patronisingly, but there was no heat behind it. Soon he and Morgan had vacated the room, leaving Tony and Pepper alone with Peter. Pepper sunk back into her chair, her elbows resting on the edge of Peter’s bed. Tony watched her eyes flicker from one vital sign to another, taking everything in. 

“Come on, Peter,” Pepper whispered softly as both of her hands help one of Peter’s tightly in her grasp, “you can do this. You just need to open your eyes.”

Tony had absolutely no idea how much time had passed since Pepper had arrived - it could have been minutes, hours, or even the entire night having flown past - but he was pulled out of the trance-like state he’d been in watching over his wife and son by three soft  _ taps _ on the wooden door frame. The noise had Tony turning to see the new arrival to the room, and at the sight of a disconcertingly ruffled Steve he quirked an eyebrow in concern. 

“What happened?” he questioned, the words lifting Pepper’s gaze from Peter to glance at her husband as her fingers gently carded through the teenager’s hair.

Steve sighed. “I’m sorry, I tried to settle her down but,” he paused, rubbing a hand over the back of his head tiredly, “I think she just needs one of you.” His expression was guilty and Tony stood up, ignoring the stiffness in his joints, and clasped a hand on his friend’s shoulder. The dark circles under clear blue eyes mirrored the deep bruise-like shadows under Tony’s, and he guessed that he hadn’t been the only one kept awake with a restlessness at not being able to do anything. 

“Go to bed, Steve,” Tony commanded, the other man’s lips pulling up at the sides in a half-smile as Tony moved his hand to Steve’s back and shoved him towards the door. “Hey,” he called out quietly just as Steve passed through the door into the hallway but paused to turn back to face him. “I mean it, get some rest.”

The guilt that Tony had felt for the past three days about leaving his daughter in the care of others - family or not - was no longer being quelled by the excuse that Pepper wasn’t there to sit with Peter and one of them had to. He watched as his beautifully strong wife murmured softly to their son before moving to stand beside the bed, tilting his head down to press a kiss to her cheek. 

“Stay with Peter, let me know if anything changes.” He ran his fingers briefly over the back of Peter’s knuckles, snagging his phone from the side table on his way out of the door and sliding it into his back pocket. His legs were stiff from the last three days of disuse but walking to the elevator got the blood flowing again.

Emerging from the car once it reached the apartment, Tony’s ears were immediately met with the anguished cries coming from the sofa in the living room. He walked quickly into the room and saw Natasha gently shushing his daughter as the girl sobbed into her shoulder. “Look,” she murmured as she met Tony’s glance over the top of the disheveled french braid Morgan’s hair had been pulled in to, “someone’s here to tuck you in.” 

If the guilt Tony had felt had been strong before, now it was a force of its own threatening to bring him down. “Baby,” he whispered, sitting down on the couch beside Natasha and placing a gentle hand on his little girl’s hair. The second he made physical contact Morgan’s arms unwound themselves from around Natasha’s neck. She took a moment to take in her father, her eyes red-rimmed and tear-filled as her sobs faded back into hiccuping cries, before shuffling out of her aunt’s hold to be met by Tony’s embrace. “Daddy’s here, Morgan, it’s okay.” Tony readjusted his position so that Morgan’s legs were draped over his own, her head resting against his shoulder, and with one arm secured behind her back and the other under her legs he lifted her up as he got up from the couch. There was a soft whine of protest at the movement but by the time Tony got to his and Pepper’s room he was almost certain Morgan had fallen asleep. Sure enough she didn’t stir as he laid her down on Pepper’s side of the bed, pulling the heavy white comforter over her. Tony climbed in on his side and pulled Morgan towards him with the raspberry scent of her shampoo filling his nose as she unconsciously burrowed in to his side. He pulled the cellphone out of his pocket and set it down on his bedside table. He had a split-second of thought about changing in sweats, his jeans were a lot less comfortable than his pyjamas, but it was the most peaceful he’d felt since the beginning of the whole ordeal and he dismissed it as he lay back on the pillow and closed his eyes.

**-x-**

“Daddy.”

Tony groaned. There was a small finger jabbing into his shoulder and the owner of said extremity was whispering directly into his ear.

“Daddy, it’s  _ buzzing _ !” 

Tony’s eyes opened minutely into a squint, the light on Pepper’s nightstand was on and overwhelming his sight. After several seconds spent adjusting to the brightness he rolled over to face his own bedside table; sure enough, on the surface of it his phone was shifting with each vibration as it rang. Not even bothering to glance at the caller ID Tony fumbled with the device, prodding the ‘answer’ button on screen clumsily before lifting it to his ear. 

“Pep?” 

_ “His fever dropped, Bruce said he can come off the ventilator and they’re cutting back the propofol.” _

“What’re you saying?” Tony pushed the covers off and swung his legs out so that his feet were on the floor. Beside him Morgan crawled over the mountains of duvet and looked up at him with her wide eyes.

The noise on the other end sounded like it was a sob as well as a laugh.  _ “Tony, he’s going to wake up soon.” _

Without another word Tony hung up. “Okay sunshine,” he declared as he jammed his phone back into his pocket, wrapping an arm around Morgan’s waist as he stood up and hauling her over his shoulder. “We’re going to play sleepover with someone one more time, alright? Daddy has to go check on Peter, then in the morning you can come back down after breakfast.” Moving as quickly as he could while keeping a firm enough hold on his daughter, the girl in question squealing in delight from her fireman’s carry position, Tony sped down the hall and through to the living room. Natasha and Rhodey were both sitting on the couch and looked up in mild alarm at the rushed entry. 

“Peter?” The questioning tone from his best friend had him giving an abrupt nod of his head. The man got up from the suede cushions and strode over to Tony. “Gimme my niece.” Rhodey wrapped his arms around Morgan and shifted her off of her father’s shoulder to his own. The little girl giggled as Rhodey sauntered over to the couch and dropped her onto the cushions with exaggerated effort. Looking at his best friend with his daughter had Tony sending yet another spiritual thank you to whoever it was that had given him James Rhodes as a roommate freshman year- they’d received a lot of them from him over the years. Turning on his heel and hurrying over to the elevator that Natasha had called Tony stepped into the car and jammed the button for the right floor. The flurry of activity that met the opening elevator doors wasn’t the most comforting sign but it didn’t seem panicked as it had been when Peter had first come in. As he approached Peter’s door he heard Bruce inside, seeing a nurse with a sterile instrument tray on a rolling table set up beside Peter’s bed once he walked in. Pepper held a hand out to Tony from where she stood against the wall out of the way, wrapping her slender fingers around his calloused hand.

“They’re about to take him off the ventilator,” she explained as Bruce spoke in medical jargon to the nurse. “He started triggering it an hour ago, and since his fever has gone down Bruce said that it’s okay?”

The doctor glanced over his shoulder at the questioning inflection. He nodded while snapping on a pair of blue latex gloves. “I can’t explain it, but suddenly he’s just…,” Bruce paused, brow furrowed in disbelief, “better. No clear trigger, no medical intervention, he just started improving out of nowhere.”

“That’s a good thing, right?” Tony demanded. His gaze was determinedly fixed on Peter and it felt like his heart jumped in his chest every time he saw the flicker of movement beneath the closed purple eyelids. Pepper’s grip tightened on his hand as the nurse - one of the few that had been rotating through Peter’s room, Tony recognised - began dismantling the oxygen mask that was attached to the tube going down Peter’s throat. Bruce stepped forward and turned to face the two.

“The reaction to having the tube pulled out can be violent sometimes,” he warned, “you may want to step out.”

Tony saw Pepper hit their friend with a stony expression that conveyed how she would  _ not _ be leaving her son at that moment. Shaking his head himself he jerked his chin towards Bruce to get it over with. The nurse lifted a syringe to the IV and injected it as Bruce stepped up and gently grasped the plastic tubing.

“Sedation is lifting,” she confirmed as the fluttering behind Peter’s eyelids increased.

“Alright Peter, let’s make this nice and easy.” Bruce’s chest rose and fell with a deep inhalation. His grip on the ventilation tube tightened and he firmly began to extract it; Tony could feel the blood draining from his face as he watched his child choke unconsciously on the plastic being retracted from his throat. The end of the tube finally emerged and Bruce dropped it down onto the tray the nurse had moved into position for him before putting the nasal cannula she held out to him into place. 

“There we go,” he murmured, stepping back once it was in place. He turned back to face Tony and Pepper, a tired smile gracing his features. “It’s just up to him now,” he explained, “he’ll wake up soon, I’m guessing probably sometime in the next few hours. We’ll still have tests to run, but it looks like he’ll be fine.” Bruce shook his head in disbelief, casting a fond glance at Peter. He held the door open for the nurse wheeling the medical table out and exited after her, closed it softly behind him and leaving Tony and Pepper in the room with Peter.

Tony took a hesitant step forward, his eyes glued to the monitors. Part of him expected the alarms to start at any second now that there wasn’t a machine forcing air into Peter’s lungs, but instead he was met with a peaceful constant  _ beep _ of the heart rate monitor accompanying the soft rise and fall of Peter’s chest. Pepper rounded the bed to the chair on the side across from Tony and sat down, leaning forward to take a gentle hold of Peter’s hand. Tony sank down into his own seat, watching as his wife bent her head to rest her forehead against the hand clasped in her own. 

“Hey, bud.” Tony readjusted the blankets covering Peter, mindful of the IV still connected to one of his arms. “Whenever you feel like showing us those big brown eyes of yours we’re here, so ready when you are kiddo.”

Pepper lifted her head and sniffed, her eyes red as they met Tony’s. “It could be a while,” she reminded in a coarse whisper, “do you want to go back and get some rest?”

“Yes,” Tony replied immediately, raising an eyebrow in disbelief at the very question. “I’ll go and do that, and then afterwards I’m going to write a nice letter to Hammer to let him know how innovative and original his designs are.”

The familiar sight of his wife rolling her blue eyes brought a soft chuckle out of him. The two settled down in their chairs with their son in between them; Tony could feel his eyes closing for longer periods each time he blinked, and shifting his eyes from Peter to Pepper he could see that her own eyes had closed. Pushing himself out of his chair, ignoring the exhaustion that was creeping back up on him after the interrupted night of sleep, he crept over to the other side of Peter’s bed. Placing his hands on either side of her shoulders he gently eased her sleeping form up from where she was bent over the side of the bed so that she was instead leaning back against the support of her chair. Once he was satisfied that his wife was in a more comfortable position he took one of the extra blankets from the cabinet against the wall and draped it over her. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and then went back to collapse into his own chair.   
  


  
**-x-**   
  


“Ow.”

Tony’s head whipped around so quickly from where he was stood beside the door at the sound that came from the bed behind him he almost cricked his neck. A hand reflexively flew up to rub at the sore spot, but the only thing Tony’s brain had the capacity to think about and compute was the fact that Peter was blinking at him owlishly, a frown denting the pale skin on his forehead. 

“Holy shit,” Tony gasped dumbly, “ _ Peter _ .” He stumbled forward for the couple of steps it took to get back to the chair he’d been living in since bringing Peter down to medical and collapsed into it. He pressed one of his hands against Peter’s cheek while the other brushed the messy hair back from his son’s forehead. “You have no idea how good it is to see those beautiful eyes of yours, bud,” he muttered wetly, feeling the moisture build in his eyes.

“Nnnff.” Peter grumbled incoherently, a hand coming up absently to grasp at the thin plastic tubing running under his nose across his cheeks.

Tony removed his hand from Peter’s hair to gently take hold of the fingers clumsily trying to grab at the cannula. “Nope, Pete, that stays there,” he reprimanded softly, interweaving his fingers around his son’s. He watched as Peter’s eyes roamed slowly over the room, taking a second every now and then to focus. “You’re in the medical wing, bud, you’ve been pretty sick.”

The boy’s eyes continued to drift and he had yet to say anything. Tony tried to ignore the icy fear creeping its way back up his spine as the memory of Bruce’s warnings about side effects of being on a ventilator and in a drug-induced coma forced its way to the front of his mind. He placed a hand on Peter’s face, cupping his cheek and placing himself directly in his line of sight.

A small breath of relief pushed its way out of Tony’s lungs when Peter met his eyes. “Kiddo, I’m going to need you to say something, okay? Literally anything, just give me words.”

“Am I okay?” It was jarring hearing the loud and enthusiastic voice of his son come out raspy and weak, but the coherent sentence released the last weight of fear and tension from his mind. 

Ignoring the burning in his eyes and the feeling of a tear escaping down his cheek Tony smiled. “Aside from the fact that you definitely scared a few years from the lives of your parents, you’re completely and totally fine.” Tony pressed a kiss to Peter’s brow, relishing in the fact that his son’s skin didn’t feel like it was on fire anymore.

“Mom?”

“Is going to be kicking herself that the one time she leaves to go to the bathroom is when you wake up.”

As if on cue the soft  _ tap _ of Pepper’s flat on the tiled hallway began to approach, and he and Peter turned their gaze to the doorway as she appeared and came to a sudden stop as soon as she took in the sight in the room in front of her.

“Oh my god,” Pepper gasped, throwing a hand out to clasp the doorframe and keep her balance when she saw Peter looking back at her, “ _ Peter _ .” Tony felt his heart in his chest throbbing as he watched his wife take in Peter’s tired open-eyed expression, moving to sit on the armrest of his chair so that she could sit beside him

“Hi baby,” she whispered, cupping his cheek in her palm as he turned his head towards her.

“Sorry to interrupt.” The voice at the door brought Tony’s gaze upwards, and the smile on his friend’s face in place of the grim pessimism that had been residing there for the past few days was a welcome change. “How’re we doing, Peter?”

“Okay, I guess.” In typical teenager fashion the statement was accompanied by a half-shrug as Pepper stroked his hair back and Tony kept his own gentle hold on Peter’s shoulder. 

Bruce’s smile grew wider as he made his way over to the bed with his tablet under his arm. “You have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that,” he replied softly, clapping a hand gently on Peter’s leg over the blanket. After a moment he cleared his throat, turning his attention to Tony and Pepper as he brought something up on his tablet. “From what I can see he’s completely fine. There are a couple of differences from his vitals before this happened, his heart rate is increased a little and his core body temperature is slightly lower than usual, but these can be common effects of the body fighting off an infection.”

“And that’s what it was?” Tony asked, thumb running over the back of Peter’s knuckles. “An infection?”

Bruce held his gaze for a moment before shaking his head resignedly. “Honestly, I still don’t know.” Pepper frowned at Tony at the admission but he kept his focus on the doctor. “There was no clear indicator of a foreign pathogen or bacteria, it was almost like his body was attacking itself and then just decided to….stop.”

“Could it happen again?”

“I don’t like to make promises I know I can’t keep, but I can all but guarantee that it won’t. Peter’s immune system looks like it’s completely regenerated itself, it’s ten times stronger than it was the last time he had a physical.”

“How long do I have to stay here?”

“We only got you off the ventilator this morning, bud, give us a couple days to make sure you’re alright.” Bruce took a final note of some of the readings from the machines before heading out of the room.

Peter’s eyes widened and he turned to Tony. “I was that sick?” he whispered.

Tony winced, trying to push the very fresh image out of his mind and keep a neutral expression on his face. “Yeah, you were.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why, did you ask Santa for an undefinable life-threatening illness last year? Because if you didn’t then I’m not sure what you’ve got to be sorry for.”

Peter rolled his eyes before glancing between his mother and father. “Is Morgan okay?” 

Tony pushed the hair back from Peter’s forehead, smiling as the teenager scrunched his nose at the gesture just like he always did. “Little Miss Morguna is going to be throwing the tantrum to end all tantrums once she realises you’re awake and she’s not down here with you.”

“Can I see her?”

Pepper stood up and moved back around the bed to the chair she’d been inhabiting, tucking the blankets in around Peter once she’d sat back down. “Sweetheart, let’s take it easy for now, alright? We can bring her down this afternoon, but for now I think you should rest.”

Peter sighed, fingers coming up to touch the silicone tubing under his nose. “It sounds like all I’ve been doing is resting.”

“I don’t think it counts if you’re under sedation.”

The interruption came with Clint leaning against the door frame, hands in his pockets but a grin on his face that Peter reciprocated with a small wave. Tony nodded his head at his friend and gestured for him that it was okay to come in. Clint strolled over to the bed and Tony (only somewhat reluctantly) acquiesced some space so that the man could give the kid as much of a hug as he could while he was still in a hospital bed. “There’s my guy,” he stated boldly, ruffling Peter’s hair as he straightened up and took a step back for Tony to reclaim his space. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, I just heard he was awake and wanted to see for myself. Cooper keeps asking if his Nerf partner is going to be okay, and now I can let him know that he is because I’ve seen him with my own two eyes.”

Peter’s eyes widened. “Is he still coming over?”

“How about we work on getting you out of medical first, then we can schedule your playdate again,” Tony replied dryly, shooting a glance at Pepper who was shaking her head fondly at what she had long ago coined as the genetic ‘Stark Stubbornness’ that both of their children had inherited. 

“Uh, not to impose,” Clint added, gesturing with his thumb pointed over his shoulder, “but there are a couple of people waiting out there who would love to catch a glimpse of the kid for a second.”

Tony turned to Peter. “Your call bud, you up for it?” 

There was a firm nod from the teenager, and Clint walked back over to the door, leaned out of it and whistled. “Damn farmer,” Tony muttered, letting out a yelp when Pepper reached over Peter to smack his shoulder gently.

A moment later Clint stepped back into the room, followed by Natasha. As the other woman entered the room Pepper got up and walked over to Tony’s side of the bed. “I’m going to go and check on Morgan, let Rhodey come down here,” she whispered. She leant down to kiss Peter’s cheek before straightening up and giving Natasha a quick hug on her way out. 

“Hey  _ ребенок _ .” Natasha greeted Peter in a soft voice with a smile on her face as she sat on the edge of his bed, wrapping one of her hands around his.

“ _ Привет _ ,” Peter came back, the word hoarse and rough but it made Natasha laugh. She leaned over to bring Peter into a hug, her slender arms wrapped around his shoulders. After a moment she pulled back and eyed him critically.

“Never again,” she commanded firmly.

Peter’s eyebrows knitted together in confusion. “Never again...what, get sick?” 

“Yes,” she confirmed with a nod. “I forbid it.”

“I’ll cosign that,” Tony chimed in, followed by Clint’s own contribution of “isolation pods are underrated”. 

A knock on the door brought everyone’s attention towards Steve walking into the room, his hands in his pockets and an easy grin on his face. “Yeah, I’ll sign on to that too,” he added jokingly, moving to stand behind Natasha. “It’s good to see you up, Peter,” he offered warmly, clasping a hand gently on the teenager’s shoulder.

Tony could see in Peter’s increasingly slumped-down position that despite how much he loved having his family around him, the quarter hour of being awake and conversing had worn him out. Not wanting to make him feel micromanaged Tony clapped his hands on his thighs and stood up. “It’s great you guys all came in to see him, but I think I’d feel better if he got some rest,” he declared, the others quickly picking up on the hint and heading to the door. “If you see Rhodes send him in, but no one else for a while.”

Once it was just Tony left in Peter’s room he crept back to his son’s side and crouched down beside the bed.

He raised a hand and carded his fingers through Peter’s mop of hair. “You have no idea how happy I am right now kiddo,” he whispered. Peter blinked sleepily at him and so he leant forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Go to sleep, it’s okay. I’ll be here when you wake up.” For the first time in days, standing and watching his son fall asleep, the heart rate monitor beeping in a calm rhythm, Tony allowed himself to exhale. Slumping back down into the chair he’d claimed as his own for almost a week, dragging a hand through his stress-tousled hair, he felt himself drifting off without the fear that kept his heart racing and the impending worry about what he’d wake up to. For the first time in almost a week, it finally seemed like everything would be okay.


End file.
